


hand in glove

by pathogenesis



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: (for robots), Fluff, Laboratory Safety Standards, M/M, Minor Injuries, Perceptor: combining staggering intellect with a baffling dearth of emotional awareness, Unresolved Romantic Tension, holding hands all the way to the med bay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-06
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 02:35:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29877810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pathogenesis/pseuds/pathogenesis
Summary: It was pleasant to see Brainstorm actually adhering to their regular safety protocols for a change, Perceptor reflected.
Relationships: Brainstorm/Perceptor (Transformers)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 34





	hand in glove

It was pleasant to see Brainstorm actually adhering to their regular safety protocols for a change, Perceptor reflected. 

Brainstorm’s approach to invention had long been pitted with little (or big) ‘accidents’. Working side by side with Brainstorm, from the first occasion at Kimia to now, so much later, on the Lost Light, had been a long and bumpy road of potholes created by a disregard for basic laboratory safety. Each of these little catastrophes was filled in and paved over with hand-waving, egotistical blathering, and apparently-miraculous inventions, which—while impressive—usually served no constructive purpose. 

But change was upon them, it seemed. They had spoken about it, after Brainstorm’s defence, when he had been deemed to require Perceptor’s “supervision” in his workshop. 

(Perceptor had not bothered to inform Lost Light command that he was not, in fact, versed in the mysteries of time travel (this was _not_ expertise that could be gotten with a single cycle’s study, or really even a decacycle, and possibly not even a megacycle—Brainstorm’s ‘life’s work’ was about as simple and readily comprehensible as the mech himself) and could hardly be expected to know that a new time travel device was being constructed if it turned out to be not arbitrarily designed as a time briefcase but, say, a _time shotgun_ instead…) 

Brainstorm had been—so deflated, after what he seemed to view as his defeat. As though annihilating himself from the time stream would not have been a tremendous loss to everyone who knew him. Perceptor had brought up several basic laboratory safety guidelines, and received in response a desultory ‘yes, I’ll be more careful.’ The answer had grated for its lack of specificity but everything about the exchange had seemed too fragile to pressure further. 

Today, Perceptor noticed it while he was occupied with scrubbing plates. He’d used them to grow a sample of an organism that had caused them some trouble several cycles ago—but now the model was no longer useful to store, and he had sufficient records. The task was mindless, particularly given that he was simply removing larger pieces of matter and would autoclave the plates for sterility. It allowed his processor the time and space for background thinking. 

Movement to his left, and then conspicuous stillness, caught his attention. Without moving his head, Perceptor caught in his peripheral vision the moment when Brainstorm glanced sideways at him, raised his yellow optics to the roof, and then put on the neoprene gloves before tapping out the access code to the corrosives cabinet. 

Seeing it was made more pleasant by the knowledge that Perceptor would, likely as not, have failed to even notice had he not seen Brainstorm pause to look at him—it felt as though he was taking his agreement seriously. Perceptor would have liked, ideally, for Brainstorm to take more care for his safety for his own sake, and not because he knew taking unnecessary risks in their shared space would irritate Perceptor, but the outcome was positive either way. 

He finished with the last plate and set it aside for the autoclave later, before turning back around and leaning against the sink. For a moment he simply watched Brainstorm mutter to himself as he manipulated tiny quantities of glossy blue fluid into the casings of custom ammunition. Perceptor wasn’t sure what it was for, but Brainstorm had tended to default to weaponry in the time they’d shared a workspace. It might have simply been that it was familiar, and therefore comfortable. 

Perceptor watched him for a few long seconds. The overhead lights were bright, and they shone on the upwards-most planes of his plating and created deep shadows on others. His face was brilliantly lit, fixed in a fierce expression of concentration, but his canopy was a patch of inky acrylics beneath his chest plates and their bright Autobot symbol. The jar he was using had several significant warnings on it for corrosion and contact-injury, but the gloves were thick and his hands were steady. 

It was hard not to wonder what went on in his processor, sometimes. But right now, he seemed fully focused on the task at hand. 

Perceptor waited until the last casing was full, not wanting to disturb Brainstorm during a sensitive operation. Brainstorm at length put the lid back on the container and secured it, and as he was returning it to his stores Perceptor took the opportunity to say, in what might have been the awkwardest attempt at positive reinforcement known to Cybertronian science: “You’ve been taking more precautions lately. It’s gratifying to see how seriously you’re taking your commitment to following more of our laboratory safety guidelines.” 

“ _Hhk!_ ” was not the noise he expected in response, but it was the noise he heard. It was… possibly?… the sound of fans trying to start while vents slammed shut. 

Brainstorm shot him a look like a turbofox caught in the headlights of a semi. 

“You. Er. You noticed! I mean, of course you noticed—you notice lots of things. I,” he went on, bafflingly, “that is,” and then he stopped trying to finish any one of those sentences, because he tripped over what was either absolutely nothing, or else his own foot. 

Brainstorm went down with a yelp, momentum arrested only because he smashed his chin on a cabinet. The jar flew from his appropriately-gloved hand to shatter on the floor, spraying its contents all over. 

The introduction of corrosive spatter of who-knew-what to Brainstorm’s face and canopy prompted a much, much louder shriek. 

Perceptor flinched at the shocking noise. He had a brief, jarring memory of shooting a seeker through one wing. He wasn’t even sure when that had happened, only that his processor had found a tentative match for the shriek that came out of Brainstorm, which was—unsettling and irrelevant. 

He made a lunge for the hose. 

Perhaps naturally, Brainstom was trying to get it off his face first, but he was using his hands, which was only smearing it. 

“Stop touching it!” Perceptor snapped, low and loud. Brainstorm went still in shock, and Perceptor took the opportunity of turning the water on him at full force. Simple water wasn’t necessarily easy to get on the Lost Light, but it was necessary for diluting any number of things that could be dangerous in concentration. 

Brainstorm sputtered and tried, perversely, to turn his face away from the spray, forcing Perceptor to grab him by one of the guns mounted on his back and hold him under the pressure. His optics weren’t cracked, but the lenses had gone foggy, roughened by the eating of whatever terrible thing he’d been loading into the ammunition casings. 

“Let me get it all,” he said, much more softly, when he could see Brainstorm’s panic slow. He let go of him and tilted the spray away from his face and further down, making sure to catch his chest plates and canopy, and then chased anywhere he could see stray marks. The corrosive had really burned anywhere it had splashed. 

Brainstorm could very easily have taken the hose, Perceptor supposed, but instead he sat very still and let Perceptor aim it between plates, making sure not to neglect any of the much more delicate internals that may have been hit. 

“Well,” muttered Brainstorm, once the hose was off, into a dripping silence and from his own miserable little puddle on the floor, “At least my hands aren’t burnt?” 

Perceptor forbore to mention that goggles would have prevented the optical damage: Brainstorm was both aware, and undoubtedly would be less receptive due to his pain. 

“Indeed,” he murmured, and then he put the hose back upon its hook and went to comm the medbay to let them know he was coming while Brainstorm gingerly levered himself up from the puddle. 

Brainstorm made it to his feet, then shoved his hand out and grievously misjudged the height of the bench, walked straight into it, and made all the instruments on its surface rattle ominously. He stilled. 

_:Actually,:_ Perceptor sent to First Aid, suddenly glad that he had only been cleaning plates and not engaged in something more interesting, _:perhaps I will escort him.:_

Very carefully Brainstorm peeled his gloves off—using the awkward but accepted mode of getting both off his hands without exposing any fingers to the outermost surface of the material, and thereby proving that he did actually _understand_ the rules, even if he did not _like_ them—and stretched his fingers in front of his face. 

It was not obvious whether or not he could see them through his damaged optics. 

“First Aid is expecting us,” Perceptor told him. 

“Us? What? Did you get sprayed too?” Brainstorm reached for him like he might be able to check, with only his now-ungloved fingers, if Perceptor was covered in corrosives. 

“No. Give me your hand, you’ll only cause more damage if you try to go wandering about the ship with broken optical lenses.” 

“What?” Brainstorm did not move. 

“Brainstorm,” Perceptor said, in a tone of exaggerated patience, “I am going to escort you to the med bay—” he took Brainstorm’s hand himself, since it didn’t seem to be doing any moving on its own, “—where First Aid will treat you and run some scans, and, apparently, make sure you haven’t done yourself processor damage.” 

Brainstorm’s fans clicked unhappily somewhere deep inside, like they were trying to turn over and cool his large twin engines, which weren’t even running. Was that the result of frame stress? 

“And you want to—er, you want to hold my hand, to… to do that?” Brainstorm said, in a strange and stilted voice. 

Perceptor felt the frown tugging at his mouth. He had been glib, but processor damage was looking more and more like a possibility. Perceptor did not like the thought. Brainstorm’s processor was… important. But his dislike of it did not affect its likelihood. Was it possible that he was glitching? Something had to have caused him to stumble in the first place. 

“Is there some alternative you prefer? Or—” his fuel tank pinged him with an odd error, and Perceptor shunted it to background processing, “someone else you want me to call?” 

“No!” Brainstorm’s matte grey fingers closed reflexively around Perceptor’s, a little too hard. “This is fine! This is fine. I’m just. Checking. You know… confirming. My hypothesis.” 

Checking. “Well… all right,” Perceptor said. He had to forcibly rearrange his priorities to avoid dwelling on Brainstorm’s baffling behaviour instead of seeking treatment. If he was glitching, First Aid could resolve both issues. 

He tugged gently on Brainstorm’s hand. The fingers squeezed again, flexing their warm living metal around his, pleasant but oddly exploratory. Perceptor ignored it. 

“Ha…” said Brainstorm, following at an uncoordinated stumble—Perceptor slowed down, although now he was worrying about motor damage—through the doors of the workshop they were sharing. “I guess it’s a good thing I was wearing gloves.” 

Outside and in the corridor, the air was slightly warmer and the regular ship sounds and smells more evident. The workshop had reinforced doors and an isolated ventilation system. 

“Yes, you said that,” Perceptor pointed out. Had Brainstorm forgotten? 

At one end of the corridor where it intersected with another, he saw the unmistakable silhouette of Chromedome cross the path, notice them, look at them, hesitate mid-step with one foot in the air, and then conspicuously continue walking on his way with false nonchalance. 

Perceptor felt himself utterly unable to resolve whatever _that_ was into a meaningful interaction within a social framework. He shunted that minor frustration, too, into background processing and focused on getting Brainstorm to the med bay before he fried his processor. 

Brainstorm seemed mostly intent upon following passively—sort of dazedly, actually—along with Perceptor’s directions and occasionally shifting his fingers like he was trying to map Perceptor’s hand into its component parts or something. 

“It’s funny, though, right?” Brainstorm prompted when they were only minutes from the med bay. 

“What is?” 

“I mean… this has to be the first time I put on gloves in the workshop in. Well. Ever.” He waved his free hand, which was, as promised by the packaging of the stack of neoprene gloves in the workshop, unblemished. 

Perceptor looked sideways at him. It was a judgemental look. Brainstorm couldn’t see him properly, so it served no purpose but—he was judging, nonetheless. 

“No,” he said, finally, eyeing a particularly ugly streak of corroded metal on his blast mask. Brainstorm was lucky he was wearing one. 

“I think it’s a _little_ bit funny,” Brainstorm said. 

“No, it’s not. You have acid burns on your face. Your optics are broken.” 

“Yeah, and, er, I’m not loving that. That hurts a lot. But… come on. _Little bit_.” 

Perceptor made a noise and didn’t dignify this with a real answer. 

**Author's Note:**

> (extra: Brainstorm emerges from the med bay with his optics fixed and slams open the door to their workshop yelling that he's going to make a HAND GUN HANDGUN. It generates hands. to hold. ~~he just thinks they're neat okay~~ )
> 
> thank you for reading :) leave me a comment if you'd like to


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